Singular Sugarland

Entertainment Weekly is one of my guilty pleasures. Good journalism joins pop culture. I love it!

However, I must get your opinion on something. Recently EW did a story called The Sugarland Express, about the country duo Sugarland. "Baby Girl," their beautiful song of a young woman's love for her parents and desire to make them proud, is a song that can make you cry as you are singing along. Here's a sentence from the article:

"...Sugarland have grown into one of the country's most successful and beloved acts."

Does that sound like nails on a chalkboard to anyone but me? While I have no dispute with a subsequent sentence that reads, "They've scored eight country top 10 hits..." because the "they", I feel, refers to the two members of the group, I can't understand the use of the plural verb with the singular band name.

Discuss.

Di

Comments

[barbara cuevas]

diane, you make me laugh - love to read your blog - because I discover things I would have never seen - like the word "have" - of course it is wrong - I am one who would have just glanced over the word and continued on reading. Sure can tell that grammer was not one of my better subjects...........

[suburbancorrespondent]

Thanks for your comment at MidCenturyModernMoms! Sounds like our teen daughters have a lot in common...

[Nicholas]

Nothing surprises me these days.

[Chris]

That makes my eyes bleed. Grammar Girl was on Oprah yesterday and I thought of you :-)

[MommyTime]

Well, it would be right if the writer were English. The British use plural verbs to agree with what they consider plural nouns -- herd, team, band, committee, or anything that indicates a group would take the plural: "The committee have taken a break" or "The herd stampede..." and so on.

But in American English, it's wrong (says the English teacher).

Thanks for the visits to my place lately. It's nice to meet new people!

[J]

I learned something here about British English...the 'have' would bother me, too, but it's interesting to see another point of view. Perhaps the writer is an anglophile?